Absolutely True Stories from 350

The very best thing about having been a commercial flight attendant is that I have a enough crazy stories to last through a lifetime of cocktail parties. Here is a sampling.

We must have been having a fare sale, or this woman would have been on a Greyhound bus. I knew she'd be trouble as soon as she walked up the airstairs. She had teased brunette hair, skin-tight jeans and a crazy gleam in her eye. She also had a huge faux leather shoulder bag that looked like she'd taken her Bedazzeler to it during a drinking binge. I mentally rolled my eyes as I watched her stuff the thing in an overhead bin, unable to intervene while passengers were still boarding. We happened to be on an aircraft (DH-8 100) whose overhead bins were devised to appear larger than they really are. I can picture the engineer who designed them - the same one who made cart bins that do not hold an even number of soda cans and thought giving exclusive control of the cabin temperature to the pilots was a brilliant idea. Idiot. Anyway, when I "attempted" to close the overhead (for show - I knew it wouldn't close) and told her the bag was too big, she had trouble pulling it out of the bin where it had been so tightly wedged. A very nice gentleman got up to assist her, an action I am sure he immediately regretted when she started making groaning noises as though she was giving birth. After a solid minute of this embarrassing spectacle, the bag finally popped free. She actually cradled it in her arms and beamed up at the now beet-red gentleman, who quickly resumed his seat.

My summer uniform as a Horizon Flight Attendant was designed by a dirty old man. Or maybe for dirty old men, either way, it was so embarrassing I had to slink through customs in Vancouver BC, lest I find myself in the pitying gaze of an impeccably dressed British Airways or Korean Air flight attendant. The uniform consisted of black shorts (polyester, of course), a white short-sleeved aviator shirt with black epaulets, black heeled shoes and the piece de resistance - white knee socks. There was also a multi-colored scarf that, while horribly unattractive, was actually pretty good at hiding coffee stains and improving a pasty, hungover complexion. I don't really have any interesting stories about the uniform itself aside from its total inability to flatter anybody, although once I did spill wine on an afternoon flight. I leapt back from the galley counter and looked down to see if I had gotten any on my white shirt. Fortunately, I had escaped - or so I thought. That night, after having completed several more flights in a row, I looked in the hotel mirror. I had a broad red wine stain striped across my midsection. I hadn't been able to see it beyond what some might call my "rack". And speaking of boobs, the one time I wore the tuxedo style shirt with the tiny buttons, I released myself from the shoulder straps of my jumpseat and noticed the guy in front was staring at me. I looked down. The maneuver had caused my buttons to come undone all the way down to my waist.

On overnights, crewmembers rely heavily on the hotel shuttle vans for transportation. This is generally included in whatever contract the airline has worked out with the hotel, undoubtedly to the airline's advantage. We are definitely on the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to the van drivers' pick-up schedules. Traditionally, the captain tips for the whole crew. Captains are notoriously cheap, a habit ingrained from their days building time in rinky-dink cargo operations and flight instructing for next to no pay. This doesn't help our cause. On one particular evening in BFE, America the captain from our trip bailed out on us to meet some friends, so the first officer and I were left to wait (in the rain!) for the hotel van. And wait...wait... Finally, a van pulled up. Naturally assuming it was the hotel van, we waited a beat for the driver to get out and then just opened the back ourselves and threw in our crew bags. We clambered in to the rear bench seat and headed out. For the first part of the ride, I joked with the first officer a bit, negotiating who was going to tip since the captain wasn't there. Gradually, we started taking in our surroundings. What should have been a ten minute ride down the main strip had become a 15 minute drive through neighborhoods that kept getting more and more run down. By the time we crossed the railroad tracks, we were holding hands. By the time we started seeing trees, the first officer was practically in my lap. We were seriously worried that we had haplessly fallen into an axe-murderer's clever snare. About the time we began to plan our escape, "....sshhhhhh! When he slows down for the next pothole, we'll open the door and jump out. Don't forget to roll when you hit....", we pulled up at the hotel.

Neither one of us tipped.